The present invention relates to a method of controlling a computer system including a plurality of computers interconnected by a network and used by a plurality of users through a plurality of types of computers, in which the whole computer system is usable as a computer resource of each user and provides an environment usable by each user without being conscious of the fact that a plurality of types of the computers are involved or the types of the computers included in the system.
In a conventional computer system including a plurality of computers interconnected by a network, an instruction (a process request) is given to the computer system by a user being conscious of the difference between the individual computers and the presence of files and programs to be used in the computer. A computer having a program is interrupted by a remote log-in or given an instruction to execute a program on the particular computer by a remote procedure call. Before execution of the program, however, it is necessary that a file required by the program be moved appropriately onto the computer.
In contrast, according to the CORBA (common object request broker architecture) specification proposed by the U.S. Object Management Group (OMG) assuring the coordination between the presence of a program for the whole computer system and the cooperation between programs, the use of and cooperation between the programs can be realized without being conscious of the actual presence of the programs on the computer system by registration in the ORB (object request broker) of the specification. This specification, however, defines a logical appearance of the presence of the programs registered in ORB in advance, in spite of the fact that the presence of the programs is fixed in the computers registered in advance. Also, there is no provision for the optimum use of the overall resources of the computer system.
Further, in a conventional computer system including a plurality of computers connected by a network, assume that a computer logging in to the computer system to execute some processing program has not any program or a file. Although such a program or a file can be retrieved from within the computer system through the network, the user is required to give an express instruction to the computer for retrieval in all cases.
Conventional computer systems intended to automatically select an optimum place of execution of a requested job from among the computers interconnected to a network are disclosed in JP-A-2-120968, JP-A-5-134959, JP-A-5-173990, etc. In these conventional systems, the place of executing a requested job is determined by monitoring the hardware resources such as the operating conditions and the amount of file of the computers connected to the network. Such a request is requested, since a plurality of computers are connected to the network. In this case, the location of a program and a file for executing a job are required to be indicated by the user consciously in advance.
Further, in a conventional computer system including a plurality of computers interconnected by a network, the interface is different in dependence on the computer (terminal) logging in to the computer system. In addition, the type of the process that can be requested from a computer was also dependent on the particular computer.